John: Welcome to, uh, The Evening of Awesome here at Carnegie Hall. We are, uh, we are so very excited to be here.

Hank: Because the sounds a little bit louder and my parents are a little bit prouder and the crowd is... I don't know what the crowd is, I guess the crowd's a little bit crowder because we're doing it at Carnegie Hall.

John: I didn't... I didn't know we were going to open with a musical number.

Hank: Yeah. And I'm going to say Carnegie Hall, and everybody's going to stamp their feet. Carnegie Hall! Because when the people stamp their feet, it makes me feel complete, these feet are sweet, they're better than any other feet because these feet are at Carnegie Hall.

Hank: You didn't stamp your feet.

John: Okay, sorry, do we--

Hank: The feet are at Carnegie Hall.

John: Alright. So... I didn't know about this bit. We're, uh, we're here tonight to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the publication of my book, The Fault in Our Stars, and-- uh, thank you -- and this six-year anniversary of the community of nerdfighters.

Hank: Let's not mix up our words! Nerdfighters are fighting nerds! We don't fight nerds, that's the silliest thing that I've ever heard, because these nerds are at Carnegie Hall.

John: Got it. Okay, that's great, but you gotta let me get through my bit, please. You have your bit, apparently, but I have mine. We also have some really--

Hank: When you see our special guests, you're gonna be impressed, these guys are the best, they're better than any other guests, because these guests are at Carnegie Hall.

John: That about covers it I guess. So, to summarize, we're gonna--

Hank: And his Sing-a-Majig's gonna sing it!

[John plays Sing-a-Majig]

Hank: And he'll get a little bell and he'll ring it.

[John rings the bell]

Hank: And I don't know exactly what I bring but I'm gonna make sure I bring it because I'm doin' it at Carnegie, I'm doing it at Carnegie, I'm doing it at Carnegie HAAAAALLLLL.

John: Hank Green everybody! Alright, so now I've got a bell and a Sing-a-majig. So, uh, you know since this is about the one-year anniversary of The Fault in Our Stars, we thought it'd be great to start the, um, evening with a reading from the book, um, and since it's been out for a while we can finally read from something past the first like ten pages.

John: But I'm a little tired, myself. So we thought we'd have some, some, some people who are better at acting than I am come and do it.

John: Um, so we're gonna have a reading now. Uh, you may know these people from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube. Which, for those of you who don't know, is a web-series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, so it's great to see so many people cheering for Jane Austen. Ladies and Gentlemen, Ashley Clements and Daniel Gordh.

Ashley (reading as Hazel): We left to the Frank's living area, but we were still in the museum. A long, narrow hallway showed pictures of each of the annex's eight residents and described how and where and when they died. "The only member of this whole family who survived the war", Lidewij told us, referring to Anne's father, Otto. Her voice was rushed, like we were in church.

Ashley: "True," Lidewij said, "I do not know how you go on without your family, I do not know." As I read about each of the seven who died, I thought of Otto Frank not being a father anymore, left with a diary instead of a wife and two daughters. At the end of the hallway, a huge book, bigger than a dictionary, contained the names of the one-hundred and three thousand dead from the Netherlands in the Holocaust. The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. Four. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them.

Ashley: I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around. Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent god to pray, but I don't. As we got to the end of the room, Gus stopped.

Daniel: You okay? The worst part is that she almost lived, you know. She died weeks away from liberation.

Ashley: Lidewij took a few steps away to watch a video, and I grabbed Augustus's hand as we walked into the next room. It was an A-frame room with some letters Otto Frank had written to people during his months-long search for his daughters. On the wall in the middle of the room, a video of Otto Frank played. He was speaking in English.

Daniel: Are there any Nazis left I could hunt down and bring to justice?

Ashley: We leaned over the vitrines reading Otto's letters and the gutting replies that no, no one had seen his children after the liberation.

Ashley: I think we're all dead, but it's not like Nazis had a monopoly on evil.

Daniel: True... That's what we should do, Hazel Grace. We should team up and be this disabled vigilante duo roaring through the world righting wrongs and defending the weak, protecting the endangered.

Ashley: Although it was his dream and not mine, I indulged it. He'd indulged mine, after all.

Ashley: Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.

Daniel: The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself.

Ashley: And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us.

Daniel: They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly. But something inside their iron robot hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero's errand.

Ashley: Augustus Waters. I looked up at him thinking you cannot kiss someone in the Anne Frank house, and then thinking that Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone in the Anne Frank house. And that she would probably like nothing more than for her home to become a place where the young and irreparably-broken sink into love. "I must say," Otto Frank said, on the video in his accented English, "I was very much surprised by the deep thoughts Anne had." And then, we were kissing.

Ashley: My hand let go of the oxygen cart, and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated and for a weird moment I really liked my body. This cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around, suddenly seemed worth the struggle. Worth the chest tubes, and the pick lines, and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors. The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frank kept talking from behind me.

Ashley: I realized that my eyes were closed, and I opened them. Augustus was staring at me, his blue eyes closer than they'd ever been. And behind him, a crowd of people three deep had sort of circled around us. They were angry, I thought. Horrified. "These teenagers with their hormones, making out in front of a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father."

Ashley: I pulled away from Augustus, and he snuck a peck onto my forehead I stared down at my Chuck Taylors. And then they started clapping. All the people, all these adults, just started clapping and one shouted "bravo" in a European accent. Augustus, smiling, bowed. Laughing, I curtsied every-so-slightly, which was met with another round of applause.

Ashley: We made our way downstairs, letting all the adults go down first. And right before we got to the cafe, where blessedly an elevator took us back down to the ground-level and gift shop, we saw pages of Anne's diary and also her unpublished book of quotations. The quote book happened to be turned to a page of Shakespeare quotations. "For who so firm that cannot be seduced," she'd written. Lidewij drove us back to the Filosoof. Outside the hotel, it was drizzling and Augustus and I stood on the brick sidewalk, slowly getting wet.

Daniel: you probably need some rest.

Ashley: I'm okay.

Daniel: Okay... What are you thinking about?

Ashley: You.

Daniel: What about me?

Ashley: I do not know which to prefer, to beauty of inflections, or the beauty of innuendos. The blackbird whistling or just after.

John: Sorry they didn't kiss IRL, but now you gotta watch the Lizzie Bennet diaries. So... oh right, I gotta get to the mic. Hi!

[audience member screams something, audience cheers]

John: Thanks. Alright, uh, so, I'm on a side of the road somewhere, and I'm stuck inside of a very deep hole, with no way of getting out. Never mind how I got there, it's not relevant to the story. I'll invent a back story.

John: I was walking to get pizza and a chasm opened up in the earth and I fell in and now I am at the bottom of this hole, screaming for help. And along comes you. Now, maybe you just keep walking, you know, there’s a strange guy screaming from the center of the earth, it’s perhaps best to ignore him. But let’s say that you don’t; let’s say that you stop. The sensible thing to do in this situation is to call down to me and say “I am going to look for a ladder, I will be right back!” But you don’t do that, instead you sit down at the edge of this abyss and then you push yourself forward and jump. And when you land at the bottom of the hole and you dust yourself off, I’m like “What the hell are you doing, now there are two of us in this hole!” and you look at me and say “Well, yeah, but now I am highly motivated to get you out.”

John: This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss, to be with you where you are.

John: So I've always been really obsessed with the meaning of life, particularly the meaning of my life, but also I guess to an extent the other people as well. Um. I always wondered if there was like a purpose the universe, if there were a plan, if there were some sort of organizing factor, hopefully that I played a role in. Ideally, a central role. You know, like that I would get my Hogwarts letter, that I would be revealed to be a Jedi who would be extremely important in the rebel cause. Whatever it was, that like, and when it felt like I was part of a plan, when it felt like I was part of a larger organized universe, I was really happy. And when I felt like there was no plan, I was really sad.

John: Like for instance, when I was in third grade, I dated this girl named Jennifer Keen. It's true. And when she agreed to be my girlfriend, despite like a massive popularity gap between the two of us, I was like, "the universe has a plan me." Like, someone up there has a fate just for me, and it involves marrying Jennifer Keen. And then, you know, three weeks later when Jennifer Keen broke up with me, the universe's cold, infinite apathy was laid bare at my feet and I was miserable.

John: And like this waxing and waning of faith in a purpose, relative to how happy I am, did not, I am embarrassed to admit, end in third grade. And in many ways, my life has been a very very long Emily Dickinson poem in that respect. Like I remember when I was in high school, uh, my friend Sean Titone who's here tonight, and I would drive around. And whatever we were talking about, like, we were talking about girls or getting in trouble at school, whatever it was, underneath that, there was always another deeper question. "Do I have a soulmate?" "Is there a fate that's reserved just for me?" "Is the universe interested in me in any way?"

John: I didn't need answers to those questions so much as I needed to understand them better, and have better ways of phrasing them. And Sean was very helpful with that, as were my other friends in high school, but also a great help to me was books. The books. They weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.

John: Alright, so flash forward. I'm twenty-two -- I'm getting to The Fault in Our Stars by the way. I'm twenty-two and I've just been accepted into Divinity School at the University of Chicago, but first I decide that I want to work as a student chaplain at a children's hospital, which I do for six months. And while I'm there I meet a lot of really sick kids, including many who die. And when the reality of human suffering was presented to me directly, when I realized that it wasn't just about Jennifer Keen dating you or breaking up with you, but that every day of human history children have suffered and died needlessly.

John: When I was presented with that reality, my only response was anger and hopelessness, which are not, like, A number one chaplain emotions. You know, like, I wasn't... that's why I was a bad chaplain ultimately. The only people for whom I was a good chaplain were kids who had video game consoles in their rooms because I was still really bad at all the chaplain stuff, but I've always been a reasonably proficient Mario Kart opponent. Like, I'm just good enough that when you beat me, you feel you've accomplished something.

John: But for everyone else, I was a terrible chaplain. And I think it's because, you know, when presented with this reality, I came to the conclusion that the universe either isn't interested in us as individuals or else it acts as if it isn't interested in us as individuals. And then for me, the question became, alright, so is meaning in human life inherent? Is it something that we need to discover, or is it constructed, is it something that we need to build together? This was a very interested question to me, and I spent several years writing really bad stories about a children's hospital that attempted to answer this question.

John: Actually, they were not about a children's hospital. They weren't about children or hospitals, they were about a twenty-two year old hospital chaplain, who was very much like me, only like better looking and wittier and more charismatic, and a magnet for beautiful female doctors. I wish I were kidding.

John: Um, thankfully, I put aside those stories, and I wrote Looking for Alaska, a novel about grief.

[crowd cheers]

John: Thanks. Yay grief. Um, and then I wrote, and then I wrote a book about realizing you're not as special as you always fancied yourself, called An Abundance of Katherines. And then I wrote a book -- Oh, thank you -- and then I wrote a book called Paper Towns about empathy -- thank you, thanks for reading those. It's about empathy and the importance of trying to imagine other people complexly. And I hope that all of those books are the kinds of books that can jump into the abyss to be with you. But none of them, to me at least, really addressed, directly, what I'd seen at the hospital. Because when I looked directly at that, all I felt was nihilism. All I felt hopeless and angry.

John: And then two things happened. First, I became friends with a young woman named Esther Earl, and second I became a dad. And when my son, Henry, was born I immediately realized that, as long as either Henry or I am alive, I am going to be his dad, and he will be my son. And understanding that in that sense, love is literally stronger than death, was very important to writing The Fault in Our Stars. But I think the biggest gift was my friendship with Esther, who was a nerdfighter and a reader of my books and who, from the time I met her in 2009, was very sick with cancer.

John: And Esther's life, the way that she lived it generously, imperfectly, emphatically, taught me that the real hero's journey is not how I'd always believed, the journey from weakness to strength. What Esther knew and what Augustus Waters must learn in The Fault in Our Stars, is that the real hero's journey is the journey from strength to weakness.

John: And I guess from the outside, it seems like, or it probably seems anyway that I jumped into the abyss with Esther. Right, like, here’s this author and he meets this reader of his and she’s a big fan and she’s sick with cancer, and so since he’s so awesome, he jumps down to be with her and he’s like “I’m with you to help you.” No. I wish, like, I wish I were that heroic. But where I’m standing, the true story is that Esther jumped into the abyss with me, because I was the one who was angry and hopeless and saw no meaning in life as it truly exists.

John: And Esther came to me and said “You know, I’m not psyched about having cancer, and I don’t like being in pain all the time, and this is not by any stretch of the imagination an easy life, and I don’t wanna pretend that I’m excited about this, BUT, I like being alive, I am grateful to have loved and to have been loved. I have had a good life.” And that realization, that even though Esther’s life was a short life, it was still a good and rich and full life, that realization was central to The Fault in Our Stars.

John: So the conclusion that I think I might have finally come to about this business of whether meaning is constructed or inherent, is that I don't care. Um, I don't really care how we get to meaning. I just care once we find what we get there. And to me, most of the meaning in my life has been found in collaboration. Like, even back in high school when I was driving around with Sean Titone, Thomas Williams and Todd Carte and all those guys, what we were doing collaborating on, like, making ourselves up. Right? We were figuring out what was going to matter to us, what was important to us, what kind of people we wanted to be.

John: And we had thousands of collaborators in that, you know, friends, teachers, families, the music we listened to, and the books that we liked. But that's what we were doing. And I think in some ways Hank and I missed youthful collaborations that come so easily to you when you're a teenager because you're surrounded by your peers all the time, and that's why we started Brotherhood 2.0 in 2007. Because we wanted to have collaborators again, at least each other. We did not imagine this many collaborators, I mean even as many as who are in this room, let alone all the others.

John: But I realized very early on, that this was happening and that it was exciting and that it was sort of, it was another thing like reading books that liberated me from the abyss of myself. I remember in a very early Vlogbrothers video, Hank wondered about the ethics of getting in a time machine and going back and killing infant baby Hitler to prevent Hitler.

John: And a commenter was like, "that's a terrible idea, what you should do is you should get in a time machine and you should kidnap evil baby Hitler, and while you have the time machine you should kidnap a bunch of other evil babies and you should take them to an evil baby orphanage and raise them up right so they never become evil."

John: And this idea of the Evil Baby Orphanage has inspired fan fiction and web comics, and now like a professionally-produced card game? So, we had an idea, you responded to it, we responded to your response, and then a lot of crazy things happened. Another example of this is the Pizza John shirt, which some of you are probably wearing tonight. If you're not wearing a Pizza John shirt, you can probably look around and see one. Um, the story behind that is twofold. First, I like pizza. In fact, if you'll remember, I was walking to get a pizza when I fell into this abyss in the first place. And second, for about five minutes one time, I had a mustache. Um, that's the entire story. And a nerdfighter named valerie2776, whose real life name is Valerie Barr, merged these two ideas into the Pizza John design, which in turn has allowed me to grace many thousands of torsos.

John: Usually, these collaborations are silly, but sometimes they're quite serious, like the Project For Awesome, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity and--

[crowd cheers]

John: Well now you're clapping for yourselves. But um, I agree. Um, and the Project for Awesome has literally saved lives around the world. Um, these collaborations, whether they're of the silly or serious variety, happen every day in nerdfighteria. In fact, I would argue that's what nerdfighteria is: we work together to build meaning. Like reading a book book, that helps us to feel un-alone. And I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made just by one person, uh, but that's not true either. Because if I'd been alone in the abyss of myself, The Fault in Our Stars would never have existed. Parts of it were written by Esther, parts of it were written by my wife who's here tonight, parts of it were written by my publisher Julie Strauss-Gabel who's here tonight, parts were written by Jodi Reamer my agent who's here tonight, parts were written by John Darnielle who's here tonight, parts were written by my brother Hank who's here, parts were written by TS Elliot (not here, but he's dead).

John: But that list goes on and on and on, and then the book came out, and each person who read it became a collaborator, because every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader the writer who are making the story up together. But I've been very lucky that that collaboration has gone even further because you've made art inspired by The Fault in Our Stars and music inspired by The Fault in Our Stars and short movies and lots of other things. So tonight we're celebrating one year of those collaborations and six years of building stuff together in nerdfighteria. And I hope it is a wonderful, fun night, but I just want to say at the outset: thank you. Because this collaboration has been the great joy of my professional life thus far. It has helped me, to borrow a phrase from the great Maurice Sendak, "to fall in love with the world," and I hope that it's helped you, too. Thank you. Thanks.

John: So now I am going to call to the stage a young man who co-founded VidCon, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, DFTBA Records, he's the founding editor of EcoGeek.org, and most importantly, he's my little brother. Hank Green!

(Cheering and applause)

Hank: Hi! Everybody welcome the late people! Hi late people! Sorry we didn't let you in until now. There's rules...

Hank: I was talking to Daniel Gordh, you may know him as Darcy, backstage, and he told me that nervousness and excitement are the same emotion. Which I think is crap. But if it is true, then I am extremely excited right now!

Hank: So I'm going to sing you some songs.

[crowd cheers]

Hank: I'm glad you're in favor of that idea. This first song is the first song I ever put on YouTube. Um, it's not the first song I wrote. Uh, I wrote several terrible terrible songs in high school that were raps about Pentium computers. And I also in high school wrote Baby I Sold Your Dog on eBay, which I later released on YouTube, which I maintain is a very good song. I actually wrote that song for Blink-182. I thought, like, this is a great Blink-182 song, and they'll buy it from me, and it'll be a hit, and I'll like have written a Blink-182 song. But that didn't happen, instead I'm playing in Carnegie Hall.

Hank: So, this song is about a girl. About a girl who isn't my wife. Um... and she's beautiful, and wonderful, and if you're not familiar with her body of work, this song won't make much sense.

[Helen Hunt lyrics]The first time her saw her was the day that I hit puberty,She played a beautiful girl, shunned by society,It wasn't her fault, she just smoked one laced doobie,That after-school special made me want to never do PCP.

Oh Helen Hunt, Helen Hunt,You make my heart do acrobatic stunts,You stand and face the brunt of the twister of my burning want,Helen Hunt, you know I’m mad about you.

Well I saw you naked in The Water dance,It was As Good As It Gets in my pants,And for that I really want to thank you,Your husband’s name was Hank, right?Well my name is Hank too.

Helen Hunt, Helen Hunt,You make my heart do acrobatic stunts,You stand and face the brunt of the twister of my burning want,Helen Hunt, you know I’m Mad About You.

Once an ex-best friend of mine, said he couldn't see,How an old and ugly actress could mean so much to me.Well a minute later looking down at him bleeding in the snow,I asked him who was Best Comedy Actress four years in a row.

It was Helen Hunt, Helen Hunt,You make my heart do acrobatic stunts,You stand and face the brunt of the twister of my burning want,

Hank: So after I realized that it was totally fun to write songs about stuff that I like and then put it on YouTube, I decided to find other stuff that I like, and then write songs about those things. So the last Harry Potter book was coming out, and I was like, I was like "I'm excited about this, I like Harry Potter." I didn't even know that there was like a whole community of people who wrote songs about Harry Potter, which is one of the best things that ever happened as a result of the, like, performing and creating for the internet, as I got hooked up with that whole community of people.

Hank: But I did know that there was this thing called "featuring on the front page of YouTube," which doesn't really exist anymore, but it did then. And so I wrote YouTube a letter, like an email, to like I don't know, youtube@youtube.com or whatever, and I said, "there's a book release coming up, you may have heard of it, it's kind of a big deal, it's called Harry Potter, and you should probably do a front page feature, and if you did that, I have a really interesting suggestion for a video you should feature." And they did it! And it was sort of like the first time we ever got like a lot of traction on YouTube, so it is a huge part of my life.

I'm getting kinda petrified.What would Ron do if Hermione died,Or if Voldemort killed Hedwig just for yucks?(I didn't know that was going to happen)

I have no confidenceIn theories about the Half-Blood Prince.And what if Harry's brain is a horcrux?(That happened, too)Oh, holy crap that would freakin suck.(It actually turned out to be pretty convenient)

Hank: I think that's the weirdest thing ever. How you can ask someone how they're doing and they just go "whoooooo." Like, in no other circumstance is someone doing "whooooo," this is the only time that is the case. But I'm glad you're getting your point across, I feel like I understand what that means. I'm also doing "whooooo." But are you doing okay, though? So, I wrote that song and it went really great, so I decided I would write a Harry Potter song every year forever, on the anniversary of that song. And this is one of them. It's about a Harry Potter book as well. It's just about one that happens to not exist.

[Book 8 lyrics]I know I'm not the the only oneWho wants to know more about Harry's sons.I really do think there's an unwritten storyAnd I think it's time to put fingers to keys.

Oh, a lot of people I know want to know moreAbout Grindelwald and Dumbledore.I really do think that they both batted leftyAnd I think there's probably a good story there

For Book Eight.I want a Book Eight!I want a Book Eight.And I want J.K. Rowling to sayThat the epilogue was crap,'Cause we all know it was crap!And I want J.K. Rowling to sayThat Voldemort had a sonAnd the story's just begun.And I want J.K. Rowling to sayThat she's writing Book Eight.

Oh, a lot of people I know wanna hear the taleOf that mysterious veil.I really do think it's a dimensional portalAnd I think Sirius is in Middle Earth.

And I know I wanna hear the oneAbout Hagrid's dad and Hagrid's mum.I really do think that that's nearly impossible And I think there's probably a good story there

For Book Eight.I want a Book Eight!I want a Book Eight.And I want J.K. Rowling to sayThat the epilogue was crap,'Cause we all know it was crap!And I want J.K. Rowling to sayThat Voldemort had a sonAnd the story's just begun.And I want J.K. Rowling to sayThat she's writing Book Eight.

She could call itHarry Potter and the Pillar of Storgé!Or Harry Potter and the Knights Who Say NiOr Harry Potter and the Time Lord Fights the DaleksOr Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood gets her own frickin bookOr Harry Potter and the map of the realm of NarniaOr Harry Potter and Friendship is MagicOr Harry Potter and Benedict CumberbatchOr Harry Potter and the Nerdfighters!You know that I want a Book Eight!Oh want a Book Eight!Oh, Harry Potter.

Hank: So on the list of stuff that I like, science is way up there. I've been very lucky to, like, get a foot-hold into, like, online video and have a lot of support via you people. To be able to launch SciShow and also just talk about science generally and sing about science. And I wrote this song, it's kinda a weird song, but, it's really hard to sing, but I'm gonna try. I don't know that I've ever gotten through it all the way without messing up, but you guys don't care that much, right?

Hank: Okay, I can do it.

Hank: Well a quark is never--

Hank: Turns out ... I can't do it on...

[The Universe is Weird lyrics]Well a quark can never exist by itself in isolation, something very odd happens when you try to separate them, the energy it takes to break up those two best friends is just enough to create two more to join back up with them. And a photon has no mass and thus it travels at light-speed, if you could imagine going that fast and if you try I think you might be emitted and absorbed both in the exact same instant. Even if you traveled from a place thirteen billion light-years distant.

'Cause the universe is weirdI'm kinda freaking outWhat the heck is this all aboutInfinite unbounded setsand hadronizing gluon jetsAnd we'll never understandHalf of what we have at handAt least that's what I fear'Cause the universe is weird

Well an electron has a strong charge, as strong as a protonAnd a tiny mass but not nonexistent like the photonYou might want to take a seat now, cause this might blow your mindIt has mass and charge, but not, apparently, a size

And there's a lot of stuff all around you right nowYour chair your friend your planet and your sister's neighbor's cowAnd all that mundane mass and energy is all we know and understandbut it's only 4% of what the universe has at hand

'Cause the universe is weirdI'm kinda freaking outWhat the heck is this all aboutInfinite unbounded setsand hadronizing gluon jetsAnd we'll never understandHalf of what we have at handAt least that's what I fear'Cause the universe is weird

Well I was driving in a van with my brother and I saidHey John, guess what, like, dude, NO EDGE!'Cause the universe does not exist in any way we can conceive itNo center, no edge, no none of that, whether or not you can believe it

Once upon a time, in a gassy liquid stewA molecule was like "hey, I turned me into you"This may be the biggest mystery of all the ones in which we dwellHow the universe created a tool with which to know itself

'Cause the universe is weirdI'm kinda freaking outWhat the heck is this all aboutInfinite unbounded setsand hadronizing gluon jetsAnd we'll never understandHalf of what we have at handAt least that's what I fear'Cause the universe is weird

Oh, yeah, it's so weirdIt's so frickin weirdWhy in in the universe,Is the universe so weird?It's freakin' freakin' me out it's so weirdIt's so weirdWhy is the universe...Oh the universe is weird.

John: So it is now my pleasure to introduce my favorite band in the entire world. My brother is in the top three, but my first favorite band is The Mountain Goats, and my second favorite band is also The Mountain Goats. Ladies and gentlemen, The Mountain Goats!

John Darnielle: [to crowd] Well I love you, too. Thank you so much. This is a song about making a contract with your solitude, that you want to hold it to later on, and expect to be able to [?] and say "you said." It's called In Memory of Satan.

[In Memory of Satan lyrics]Got my paintbox out last nightStayed up late and wrecked this placeWoke up on the floor againCellphone stuck to the side of my face

Dead space on the other endPerfect howl of emptinessCast my gaze around the roomSomeone needs to clean up this mess

Tape up the windowsCall in a favor from an old friend

Make some scratches on my floorCrawl down on my hands and kneesIn old movies people screamChoking on their fists when they see shadows like theseBut no one screams 'cause it's just meLocked up so tight in myselfNever gonna get free

Something sacred, something blueCannons in the harbor dawnI crawled down here to dig for your bonesOne more season then I'm gone

Black drapes over the crossesYou call in a favor from an old friend

John D: Hi, we're The Mountain Goats.

John D: A little nervous because I just found out in rehearsal this week that I've been playing this song in the wrong key on all my solo tours. So, so... this is a song and it's funny... John Green mentioned the fellow, well the fellow that's in the, yeah he's in the song. This is a song about a guy-- this is a long story, I want to not burn up all my time with it, but at the same time I feel it's important you know the story.

John D: Um, so this is a song about a little guy who one day he wakes up and there's some people come to notify him that something terrible has happened in his life, and that is that the person he loves has gone missing and needs to be saved. And so he is a sort of fellow who doesn't hesitate, he has a job, he's a plumber, but he doesn't call his boss and he doesn't do anything, he just puts on his hat and he goes to rescue his, his beloved.

John D: And well there's all kinds of things that go on with him when this happens, these people try to kill him en route. And it's terrible because he woke up expecting to go fix some drains, you know, and instead there's people throwing hammers at him, and, and turtles sliding shells at him, and when the shell hits him he dies. But he rises from the dead, but he can only rise from the dead so many times, like all of us. So.

John D: So, but anyway he traverses great hardships and trials en route to rescue his great love, and um, and then he gets there and things get so dark, and he battles a horrible dragon. And he knocks the horrible dragon into the fiery abyss, and he gets into the room behind the horrible dragon throne room to rescue his beloved -- and he's really excited -- but she's not there. His other friend who he didn't even know was missing is there. This song is sung by that friend, whose name is Toad, and it's called Thank You Mario, But Our Princess is in Another Castle.

[lyrics]I waited here all by myselfThe room was dark and it smelled like sulfurI heard the screams from way down in the darknessFelt pretty sure my life was over

I kept my hat on just for luckSang simple tunes the whole night throughI wondered if I'd wake to find myself in flamesAs I waited here for you

Yeah when you came inI could breathe again

I saw some guys dressed up like sorcerersBlue robes that flowed above the groundThey came and went and I was frightened for my lifeI tried not to make a sound

Just when my solitude was closing inI heard a howl like screeching tiresAnd I told you the one thing I know how to sayThrough the bright ringing drone of eight-bit choirs

Yeah when you came inI could breathe again

John D: I'm pretty sure I haven't played this one since The Sunset Tree album release tour. Thank you. So, here goes nothing. Uh, yeah. It's called Pale Green Things.

[lyrics]Got up before dawnWent down to the racetrack

Riding with the windows downShortly after your first heart attack

We parked behind the paddockCracking asphalt underfootComing up through the cracks

Pale green thingsPale green things

We watched the horses run their workoutsYou held your stopwatch in your left handAnd a racing form beneath your armCasting your gaze way out to no man's land

Sometimes I'll meet you out thereLonely and frightenedFlicking my tongue out at the wet leaves

Pale green thingsPale green things

My sister called at 3 AMOne morning last DecemberShe told me how you'd died at last,At last

That morning at the racetrackWas one thing that I remembered

I turned it over in my mindLike a living Chinese finger trapSeaweed and Indiana saw-grassPale green thingsPale green things

John D: Thank you so much. I cannot even begin to express the depths of my gratitude to John Green. There's a lot of people who never would've heard of our music if John wasn't relentlessly telling them to go and listen to us. I really appreciate that. I have it on fairly good authority this is a song he digs. So I thought I would play it for him. It's called Love, Love, Love.

[lyrics]King Saul fell on his swordWhen it all went wrongAnd Joseph's brother sold him down the river for a songAnd Sonny Liston rubbed some tiger balm into his glove

Some things you'll do for moneyAnd some you'll do for funBut the things you do for love are gonna come back to youOne by one

Love love is gonna lead you by the handInto a white and soundless place

Now we see thingsAs in a mirror dimlyThen we shall see each otherFace to face

Way out in Seattle,Young Kurt CobainSnuck out to the greenhousePut a bullet in his brain

Snakes in the grass beneath our feetRain in the clouds aboveSome moments last foreverBut some flair out with love love love

John D: Thank you.

John D: You'll forgive me for tuning in front of you, but I feel it's important for my D chord sound good during this song.

John D: Augh, that's wretched.

John D: That was so wrong.

John D: Apologies to anybody with perfect pitch out there. I know this is painful for you. We were going to play another one, but then I... you know, backstage is exactly as glamorous as you think it is. Everybody looking at their phones checking Twitter, and uh, and several people wanted to hear this song this week, and I don't think actually John has heard it, so... And I would like him too, because I'm pretty fond of it. It's one of those I'm perverse about where it should be on a record, but I always like to keep some unreleased. I may buckle with this one eventually, it's for a friend of mine that I went to high school with.

[You Were Cool lyrics]This is a song with the same four chords I use most of the timeWhen I've got something on my mindAnd I don't want to squander the momentTrying to come up with a better way to say what I want to say

People were mean to youbut I always thought you were coolClicking down the concrete hallwaysIn your spiked heelsBack in high school.

It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselvesIt's better to pass on through those years and come out the other sideWith our hearts still beatingHaving stared down demons and come back breathing

People were mean to youBut I always thought you were coolClicking down the concrete hallwaysIn your spiked heelsBack in high school.

You deserved better than you gotSomeone's got to say it sometime because it's truePeople should have told you you were awesomeInstead of taking advantage of you.

I hope you love your life nowLike I love mine

I hope the painful memories only flex their power over youA little of the time

We held onto hope of better days comingAnd when we did we were right.I hope the people who did you wrongHave trouble sleeping at night.

People were mean to youBut I always thought you were coolClicking down the concrete hallwaysIn your spiked heelsBack in high school.

John D: So one day I get a hardback book in the mail and I'm like "cool, somebody's sent me a book," and I open the book and I look at the front of it and it's like "hey that's a Mountain Goats song, I know that song." It was called Paper Towns, this is called Game Shows Touch Our Lives.

[Game Shows Touch Our Lives lyrics]Dug up a fifth of hood river gin,That stuff tastes like medicineBut I'll take it, it'll do.On the couch in the living room all day long,Music on the television playing our song.And I'm in the mood,The mood for you.

Turn the volume up real high,All of that money, look at it fly.And you standing there, smoking Newport'sSmoking like a chimney.Shadows crawled across the living room's length,I held onto you with a desperate strengthWith everythingWith everything useless thing in me

And I handed you a drink of the lovely little thing on which our survival dependsAnd people say friends don't destroy one anotherWhat do they know about friends?

John: It is. So we're gonna do a live Question Tuesday. What we're going to do is split into two teams: the Hank Team and the John Team, and at the end of the question period, whoever is talking will be punished via electrocution. Not mild.

Hank: Do you have the electrocution device?

John: I bet someone will bring it out if we wait long enough.

Hank: I bet someone will.

[speaking over each other]

John: But, because Carnegie Hall is a large room, we thought that we should have, like, teammates to ask us the questions.

Hank: So we asked people on Twitter to send us questions and those people now have the questions, and on my team we have one of my great friends, a lovely lady, master of terrible puns and even worse cooking, the host of My Drunk Kitchen, Hannah Hart!

Hank: It's a long way!

Hannah: Hey guys. That's great. Just real quick... ~Hellooo~

Hannah: You guys are beautiful. Thank you, bye bye.

John: And on my team, we have world-famous, best-selling author, who's also written some Doctor Who scripts over the years, um... You may know him-- several people in the audience did already faint dead away from having already realized who it is. It's Neil Gaiman.

[crowd cheering]

Hank: Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna--

John: Let Neil say Hi.

Hank: Okay.

Neil: Hello. Right.

Hank: I mean we could sit here and just let you guys scream at Neil Gaiman all night.

John: But they do-- But you all do, you all do have some questions.

Hank: We do have some questions.

John: Neil, why don't you start.

Neil: Okay.

Hank: The timer is starting now.

Hannah: I have, I have the thingy device.

Hank: Oh, thanks.

Hannah: Yeah, for--

John: You just hold on to that, Hank.

Hank: Anybody want to test it to make sure it's real?

Neil: Should we swap so you guys--

Hank: People actually volunteered.

John: No, no, Hank

Hannah: It's real, kids. It's really real.

Hank: I don't want to hurt anybody.

Hannah: No.

John: Thank you sir. Alright.

Neil: We could even do this device swapping microphones to--

John: Yeah, good idea. Good, good--

Hannah: They're so smart!

John: He's a pro.

Hannah: Oh my god!

Neil: Doing this for years. Okay, first, are we, is the-- starting now? First question, John: Advice for aspiring novelists.

John: Awww Neil, what is your advice for aspiring novelists?

Neil: I can't do that. Okay, my advice for--

John: I want you to give advice, but I'll give quick advice while you think of your advice. My two pieces of advice are to read a lot and to read broadly, and then my second piece of advice is to tell stories your friends and pay attention to when they get bored.

Hank: It's also good advice for how to video blog.

John: That is, because.

Hank: You tell stories and when they're like "I gotta thing..."

Hannah: If you're bored, they're bored, so...

John: Yeah, so I find that very helpful, and then write a lot.

Neil: I was going to say read everything, write, do not hope that elves will come in the night and write your novel for you, they never do, I've tried, it's a waste of time. And finish things. Just whatever it takes to finish, finish, and then get on with the next one. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something that you never finished.

John: Very true.

Hannah: Okay, my job is to catch my breath from constantly swooning that I'm on the same stage as Neil Gaiman, so this is pretty cool! Okay, Hank, here's a question that I saw and then I thought "wow, I'd love to ask Hank this as well." When do I start feeling like a real adult?

Hank: Well you're asking the wrong guy. I just stood up here and sang a song about the Harry Potter books and Helen Hunt for twenty minutes, so I don't really, I mean... I have no answer for you and I don't think you-- hopefully you never will. Usually I think that it's like the regular sort of like, things start to be normal and the same every day for years, so hopefully that won't happen.

Hannah: Yeah, ever. That sounds awful. Well what is reality anyway, right guys? Come on!

Neil: Oddly enough, you have to answer that, because you've been asked: What do you believe happens to people when they die?

John: Oh for the love of God.

Hank: They go to Narnia.

John: I agree.

Hank: Even though I answered that question, you have to--

Hannah: Okay, I'm sorry, I was so caught up, I was waiting for that moment of peace. Um, great, here's something that's good: What is something that you have learned about your brother John that you never knew before you started Vlogbrothers?

Hank: I didn't realize how messed up he was. Like, he's got some pretty serious psychological issues that I had no idea about. Like, you know. It's something when you have a really good friend, you don't really see, like... the raw, rusty, broken insides immediately. It takes a long time and it turns out John has some of those.

John: Here are some answers that he might have given: I didn't realize how smart he was, I didn't realize how fun he was to be around as an adult. But thank you, I appreciate that.

Hannah: Aww

Hank: It's an, it's an... I think it's nice to have that closeness--

John: Oh no, absolutely. Yeah. And to share it with Carnegie Hall.

Neil: John, if you could use three words to describe yourself, what would they be?

John: I mean, the first two words that come to mind are both handsome, so I don't know what to do with that.

Hannah: Okay, um, this is, this should... I wonder if this'll be easy. Hank, what would your Patronus be?

Hannah: Whoooa, a hush falls over the crowd.

Hank: Expecto Patronum! It's a corn dog.

John: It is. It is a corn dog.

Hank: He's being picky.

Neil: How do you feel about playing Carnegie Hall?

John: Weird.

Neil: Sum up your entire experience right now for these people.

Hannah: Extremely handsome.

Neil: There are people all the way up there that want to know what it feels like right now to be on this stage.

John: Well I mean you know this Neil, right, you can have a pretty long life and not find oneself in a situation like this. Um, most of our job is like sitting alone for many hours at a stretch. This is in many ways more fun than that. So, yeah, I... It's quite nice.

Hannah: Beautiful, beautiful.

Neil: Can we quote you on that?

John: That's actually, that's taken from when I lived in Amsterdam.

Hank: Ow!

John: He did it! You've gotta be very careful with that thing, I'm telling you. Um, it's actually, that's from when I lived in Amsterdam--

Hank: I was getting fidgety.

John: --And now matter how happy Dutch people are about something, they just say that it's quite nice. That's much better than "nice." So yes, it's great.

Hannah: Is that what Dutch people do? You know what the Japanese do when they think something's really off-putting? They just say "oh, interesting... hmm... alright..." Okay--

Neil: We British just say, "yes that's a very brave choice."

Hannah: Aww British people, they're so great... Um, okay, here's a little bit of a sexy question for you, Hank. Have you ever had a crush on a teacher?

Hank: Yeah, sure. Actually I had a crush on Ms. Valaine, my high school English teacher in junior year and she's now a nerdfighter, she like participates in Project For Awesome, she's always in the comments, and like, like sometimes she Skypes me and I'm like "hey." So yeah, I mean I had other crushes on teachers, too, but that's the only one that like, now, I keep in touch with. It's weird.

Neil: Do you think she's watching the YouTube feed?

Hank: I don't know. Ms. Valaine, are you there? She doesn't know I had a crush on her, so maybe she does now. I'm sure one of her students does.

John: That's what the internet calls awkward panda.

Hannah: I know. And all the fanfics are being written.

[crowd shouting]

Hannah: What are they shouting?

Neil: When you first began writing seriously, did you doubt your skills?

John: YES.

Neil: Do you still doubt your skills?

John: I mean, that does not go -- in my experience at least, that does not go away at all. I don't know, does it go away for you?

Neil: No.

John: Yeah, so that doesn't bode well.

Neil: You win all these lovely fancy awards and it just makes it a little bit harder the next time it's you and a blank screen.

John: Yeah, absolutely. Every time I feel like I've never written a novel before, and like everything I did before this was totally unhelpful and like all that stuff was done by a different person who had a bunch of different sells anyway, and so it doesn't really even count. You don't remember how he did it. And... yes.

Neil: Gene Wolfe, who was a very clever writer, I once told him very proudly, I said "I finished this book called American Gods, I think I figured out how you write a novel." And he looked at me and he said, "Neil, you never figure out how to write a novel, you just figure out how to write the novel you're on."

John: Yeah.

Hannah: So brilliant and amazing. Everybody be cool. Just be cool. Uh. That was great guys, really really good. Yeah, that. Okay, Hank. Uh, what do you think is the most impactful thing to decrease worldsuck that has come out of Brotherhood 2.0/Vlogbrothers?

Hank: Well I think generally the Project for Awesome is the, you know, like--

Hannah: Awesome?

Hank: Yeah, but the first thing we ever did-- I think that's an easy answer, but the first thing we ever did, like in terms of philanthropic stuff, is, our first year we were in the Dominican Republic and we went to see a microfinance organization like operating on the ground and we met some of the people who'd gotten money from it and saw the business they had started, and that became a huge part how I envision the world getting better. And that's continued significantly and has been a really great example of how, you know, how people are making the world better. It seems to really work, and it, uh, I'm very excited about it and has continued to be a big part of it. What is the nerdfighter Kiva done?

John: The nerdfighter Kiva group is at I think 1.76 million dollars.

Hank: Oh, he knows exactly.

Hannah: Oh yeeaaah.

John: Well I'm the guy who has to make, I'm the guy who has to make the loans from the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck, which is rotating $8000 of credit. So everyday I have to go and make two loans.

Hank: Just to keep it in rotation. 'Cause it's just sitting there, it's not doing any good.

John: It's a hard life, four clicks.

Hannah: I'm so sorry to hear that, John.

John: So yeah, I do keep track of it. But the nerdfighters of Kiva are amazing.

Neil: John, does writing every make you feel overly-exposed?

John: Hmm... No, not really, but when I write very personally it does. So you know, sometimes when I, if I write a blog post for instance. But writing a novel I feel somehow protected by the fictionality of it. I don't know, you've written two million words of blogs, so you must feel pretty exposed.

Neil: Actually there's a weird level on which when you get the rawest and you feel like you're walking naked down the street, you're also somehow protected by the fact that everybody else that reads it goes "oh my god, I thought I was the only person who ever felt like that."

John: Right.

Neil: That comes in as a sort of wonderful blanket of love.

John: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Let's just all listen to Neil Gaiman.

Hannah: Yeah.

John: I'll take the questions.

Neil: No.

Hannah: Thank god. Okay, so we've talked about the charity work you guys do, we've talked about vulnerability in the public eye, this question I think is going to continue the trend of hard-hitting... what's your favorite pony?

Hank: I don't have a favorite pony, that's the whole point. I like Spike. 'Cause he's a dragon. And he's tiny and cute. And John doesn't need to answer that because it's not his question.

John: And thank goodness.

Neil: John, yours is equally as hard-hitting. What kind of shoes are you wearing?

John: Oh! It's funny you should ask.

Hannah: Oooh, aaaaah.

John: These shoes were never put on before they stepped on stage at Carnegie Hall. My wife Sarah got me these shoes for Christmas explicitly for Carnegie Hall, and they are, I don't know, sapphire? Turquoise?

Neil: Definitely sapphire-y turquoise.

Hannah: Blue, definitely blue.

Neil: Did your wife let you touch them?

"There are three minutes remaining in this presentation."

Hannah: What'd she say?

John: Three minutes.

Neil: That was God telling us we have three minutes.

Hannah: Okay, here we go.

John: And she's a lady.

Hannah: Is three minutes lightning round?

Hank: We're gonna start going faster, that's for sure.

John: We're gonna pick it up here. Forget about my shoes, go!

Hannah: Ready, here we go. Female anglerfish or male honey badger?

Hank: Definitely male honey badger, I mean female anglerfish just eat detritus all day long and sometimes have males clamped to them.

John: Sounds like it's not that bad of a gig.

Neil: What's your favorite breakfast food?

John: Uhhhhh, schkperg, I don't really eat breakfast. Bagels.

Hank: That is the boringest answer ever. I like to put a sausage inside of a pancake--

John: Keep talking.

Hank:--and put some syrup on it and then bacon and eggs and wrap it up like a breakfast corn dog.

John: I'm biased against it because it's misnamed. It's just candy. So regular chocolate.

Hannah: What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Hank: Uh... white mint Oreo.

John: Oh god.

Hannah: Cool story, bro.

Hank: One time, for a little while they made gingerbread. Just at Christmas one year, but Ben & Jerry's did, and it was gingerbread, and I ate like all of it, and then it was gone, and never came back. That's... sad story.

Neil: The bathrooms. Are the bathrooms at Carnegie Hall Bathrooms of Awesome?

John: I mean, I've been pretty nervous, so I've been peeing a lot. I've been to like eight different bathrooms here at Carnegie Hall.

Neil, Hannah, Hank, John, one minute.

Hannah: God dammit.

John: It's a different god.

Hank: He's... God doesn't have a gender--

John: I guess not.

Hank: --switches.

John: Alright, go.

Hannah: All genders. Al right. Hot chocolate or chocolate milk?

Hank: Hot chocolate.

Hannah: Cool.

Neil: Favorite exotic fruit?

John: Kiwi.

Hannah: Do you cry happy tears or sad tears?

Hank: I cry both, sometimes during one movie. Rapunzel, man.

Neil: If God exists, what would you like him to say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

John: Oh hi!

Hank: DFTBA!

Hannah: If there was a zombie apocalypse right now and you were going to a bookstore, what would you do?

Hank: I would become a zombie.

John: It's clear.

Hank: Almost a hundred times out of a hundred.

John: No, go on.

Neil: Cupcakes or pancakes?

John: Pancakes!

Hannah: "gif" or "jif?

Hank: "jif." Either is fine.

Neil: Pizza or Diet Dr. Pepper?

John: Pizza!

Hannah: Fiction or nonfiction?

Hank: Aww, that's a terrible question to ask a person.

(Your time is up)

Hank: Fiction.

John: YES!

Hannah: NOOOOOOOOO. Hank, why? Why? They're so good...

Hannah: That was intense.

Neil: Thank you.

John: Hannah--

John: Neil Gaiman, everybody. And Hannah Hart.

Hannah: [oh my?]

Hank: Hannah was on the ground screaming "there is no god!" Oh, I didn't electrocute myself. I almost got away with that, but then I policed myself. It's so hard to do to yourself. We had a thing on our last tour that just did it, it was like a timer, but like to actually... I just did it in my pocket. AH! Oookay.

Hank: So on the list of things that I like, there are many things, but probably my favorite thing in the world is my wife. And I went to see The Mountain Goats one time in Missoula and Katherine was out of town, so I was there by myself. And I came home after the show being like "dang that guy can write some songs." And so I sat on the floor of my living room and I wrote this song. It's one of my, like, two love songs, and I don't write them very often. Not because they're not good, but just because they turn out weird.

[Adult Female lyrics]This song is for a girlNo wait, I changed my mind,This song is for an adult female

Is it just me or is it creepyHow often romantic pet names refer to little children?And it's not just girl, and it's not just babyIt's also boy, and I even think it's where we get "shawty"

So this song is for the adult female I loveAnd if there's anything that she's been dreaming ofAll she has to do is ask

Yeah, if she wants me toI'll do what she asks me to doAs long as it isn't really evilOr otherwise, makes me like super uncomfortable

'Cause that's what love is,And I have it for herThis song is about loveBut not what we think of as loveEspecially if the "we" in question is Justin Bieber

'Cause love is hard and love is messyAnd it can hurt worse than fireAnd sometimes it makes you wanna tear down a building with your bare hands

But it also happens to beThe best thing that's ever happened to meAnd I'm obviously not a big fan of hyperbole

So this song is for the adult female I loveAnd if there's anything that she's been dreaming ofAnd if I can acquire itWith the amount of money I haveWithout making us both destituteThen all she has to do is askAnd I'll be with her until the end of timeAs long as time ends before one of us dies

'Cause that's what love isAnd I have it for herThat's what love isAnd I have it for her

Hank: Thanks. Let's hear it for the people that make this room sound this good. Thanks ya'll, I cannot believe it. I was emailing with Kimya Dawson before this -- oh is that secret? -- I was just emailing my friend Kimya Dawson for no particular reason, and she said that Carnegie Hall was like ear-heroin, once you had Carnegie Hall sound, all other sounds were pale sounds and you would do anything to get that sound back. So I'm looking forward to that. I'll enjoy that while I'm here.

Hank: So this song isn't a song. It's an observation. I like to sit in front of my computer and play guitar, like on chord websites. It's one of the great joys of learning like seven chords is that you can like play a lot of your favorite songs. And I noticed a lot of my favorite songs had this exact same chord progression in it, and in fact some of the songs that i wrote had this exact same chord progression, and it's called The 50s Progression, technically, that's the name at the top of the Wikipedia page for it. And it's like C, A minor, F, G.

Hank: And it's called the 50s Progression because back in the '50s it was super popular with songs like "Earth angel, earth angel, won't you be mine," and "Oh Donna" and "Why must I be a teenager in love." I love that you can make all different kinds of music with the same chord progression, it's just part of the infinite nature of creation, it's really cool.

Hank: But it continued after the '50s on into the '60s, so I like the alternate name, which is the "ice cream changes." Because that's just way better, you know, because it's smooth and sweet like ice cream, and everybody likes it like ice cream. Except for lactose intolerant people, those people hate this chord progression. But I don't care about them. Screw you guys. (I do care about you, I'm sorry).

Hank: But it continued into the 60s with songs, let me see-- oh yeah, like uh "Duke duke duke duke of earl, duke duke duke of earl, duke duke duke of earl," and "I'd like to be under the sea in the an octopus' garden in the shade." And then in the 80s, it was there was well, "every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every breath you take, I'll be watching you." That's a creepy song.

Hank: And then in the 90s, we switched it from like two or four beats per chord to just one. "She has a girlfriend now, she has a girlfriend now, she has a girlfriend now, she says guys don't do no more for me." And no one is immune: As I said, I write some songs with the ice cream changes in them, like "I don't have a favorite pony, and I've never seen that show, and I don't have a favorite pony, 'cause I'm like thirty one years old." And "you don't love me 'cause I'm not Edward Cullen; I can wear sparkly makeup and act all brave and sullen."

Hank: And you'd think mostly it's like happy songs all the time, but it's not just happy songs, it's angry songs, too. Like there's a Slipknot song-- any Slipknot fans in the audience? Really? I'm surprised-- "I did my time, and I want out, so if you effusive fade [more lyrics]*." And Green Day... "I'm the son of rage and love, the Jesus of suburbia, the babel of none of the above, on a steady diet of..."

Hank: But it's usually happy songs, let's admit it. In the 2000s, it was kind of a poppy time, so we got songs like "baby baby baby oh, like baby baby baby no, baby baby baby yeah." He just said "baby no" and then he said "baby yeah," like which is it Justin? "I thought you'd always be mine." Oh Justin. But then in 2011, the biggest song of the year, depending on your definition of "year," also depending on your definition of "song," "7am wake up in the morning, gotta get dressed gotta get downstairs, gotta get my bowl gotta have cereal, something's happening outside fsjldfjalk gotta get my butt down to the bus stop, I see my friends like I SEE MY FRIENDS, THEY'RE SITTIN' IN THE FRONT SEAT, SITTIN' IN THE BACK SEAT, GOTTA MAKE MY MIND UP, WHICH SEAT CAN I FRIDAY FRIDAY, EVERYBODY SAYS IT'S FRIDAY I DON'T KNOW THE WORDS TO FRIDAY WEEKEND WEEKEND FRIDAY FRIDAY GETTIN' DOWN ON FRIDAY everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend."

Hank: Thanks you guys. So we're just gonna go back to science songs, cause you know, why not. This song is about the stuff that makes everybody up. All the stuff that we know about. It's made of leptons, bosons and quarks. And this song is about quarks.

Hank: Because a quark is a fundamental constituent of matterObserved in-- whoops. That's not right. Okay, I got it.

'Cause a quark is a fundamental constituent of matterObserved in 1968 through deep elastic scatter.And we found that protons aren't as simple as we thought.We thought they were solid particles but they are not.

Protons in fact are made up of three separate pieces.It just gets more confusing as our knowledge increases.And that is what a quark is; It's a piece of a proton,And they also make up other things including the neutron.

Oh, up, down, strange, charm, top, bottomIf you don't know what a quark is, it don't matter you still got 'em.And with leptons and bosons, unless something's amiss,They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists.

Well things made up of quarks including protons and neutronsAre composite particles that physicists call hadrons.Many types of hadrons are theoretically described,But most exist for only very brief amounts of time.

Quarks have electric charge, color charge, mass and spin,And having color charge means they exist solely inside ofOther kinds of particles and cannot exist alone.Which is why quarks have never been studied on their own.

Oh up, down, strange, charm, top, bottomIf you don't know what a quark is it don't matter you still got 'em.And with leptons and bosons, unless something's amiss,They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists.

Well quarks can join together in two different ways,Baryons and Mesons, but most instantly decay.If a particle has three quarks, then it's a baryon,And if there's one quark and an anti-quark, then it is a meson.These tiny bits of matter are a part of almost everythingAnd there is no unified theory to make it less confusing.But the fact that we've identified that they exist at allIs so frickin remarkable that I just sit in awe.

Oh, up, down, strange charm, top, bottomIf you don't know what a quark is it don't matter you still got 'em.and with leptons and bosons, unless something's amiss,they make up everything that we can see and that we know exists.

Oh, up, down, strange charm, top, bottomIf you don't know what a quark is it don't matter you still got 'em.and with leptons and bosons, unless something's amiss,they make up everything that we can see and that we know exists.

They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists. They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists. They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists. They make up everything that we can see and that we know exists.

Hank: Alright, this is a hard transition for me, 'cause this song is like a third that speed. This is a song about The Fault In Our Stars, from the perspective of Hazel Grace. So just pretend I'm a teenage girl. It's not that-- I'm, I'm a little bit, you know...

We all can dream of blazing gloriesBut all I dream of now is you and your blue eyesIt's strange to think how we can feel we don't live our own livesI wasn't sure about my own but now I'm feeling fine

Your video game books,They might get me funny looksBut Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem gets me hotAnd I'm startin' to see,Not just what you want from meBut what you wanna get from what got

Now what do you think you're gonna be?You think you'll leave some kind of lasting markWell with infinite tomorrowsAnd no this isn't fairNo one gets rememberedBut right now I just don't care

Your video game books,They might get me funny looksBut Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem gets me hotAnd I'm startin' to see,Not just what you want from meBut what you wanna get from what you got

Well I wish our lives were so much simplerAnd I hope you get to have your moment in the fight, butNo one ever gets to be quite who they want to beAnd you wanted to matter, boyWell you matter to me

Your video game books,They might get me funny looksBut Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem gets me hotAnd I'm startin' to see,Not just what you want from meBut what you wanna get from what you've got

There's not a lot of amputee heroes in historyBut I've got one sittin' right in front of me

Hank: And now it is time for another of our amazing special guests here at Carnegie Hall. Good job guys. Um, I met this person while I was on tour with Harry & The Potters, which was-- I was there for like three days, and somehow like all of these amazing amazing things happened, those are just amazing people. And we were doing like just a little warehouse show, in like a tiny tiny-- literally a warehouse, with like... I was on a carpet, that was the stage.

Hank: And I was just astounded to find that Kimya Dawson was there and she was listening to my music, and she really liked it. And then she like found out about nerdfighteria and she has just been basically a nerdfighter, like she immediately became a nerdfighter, and she's super awesome and she was able to come out here and do this. So everybody, please: Kimya Dawson, who is one of the best people ever. That's, yep.

Kimya: Hi friends. Look at all of you. Cuuute cute. So I should turn it up*. Oh man, I can't see you but I love you.

[I Like Giants lyrics]When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the sideOf the road, turn out the lights, get out and look up at the skyAnd I do this to remind me that I'm really, really tinyIn the grand scheme of things and sometimes this terrifies me

But it's only really scary cause it makes me feel sereneIn a way I never thought I'd be because I've never beenSo grounded, and so humbled, and so one with everythingI am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

Rock and roll is fun but if you ever hear someoneSay you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sunLook at the ocean and the desert and the mountains and the skySay I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eyeI am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye

When I saw Geneviève I really liked it when she saidWhat she said about the giant and the lemmings on the cliffShe said I like giantsEspecially girl giantsCause all girls feel too big sometimesRegardless of their size

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the sideOf the road and run and jump into the ocean in my clothesI'm smaller than a poppy seed inside a great big bowlAnd the ocean is a giant that can swallow me whole

So I swim for all salvation and I swim to save my soulBut my soul is just a whisper trapped inside a tornadoSo I flip to my back and I float and I singI am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everythingI am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

So I talked to Geneviève and almost cried when she saidThat the giant on the cliff wished that she was deadAnd the lemmings on the cliff wished that they were deadSo the giant told the lemmings why they ought to live instead

When she thought up all those reasons that they ought to live insteadIt made her reconsider all the sad thoughts in her headSo thank you Geneviève, cause you take what is in your headyou make things that are so beautiful and share them with your friends

We all become important when we realize our goalShould be to figure out our role within the context of the wholeAnd yeah, rock and roll is fun, but if you ever hear someoneSay you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sunLook at the ocean and the desert and the mountains and the sky

Say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eyeI am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eyeI am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eyeAnd I don't wanna make her cryCause I like giants

Kimya: Thanks. Thank you. Ah. Carnegie Hall. Holy sheep.

Kimya: Aaaah, come on.

Kimya: My daughter's six and whenever she and I go out somewhere, if somebody comes up and they're like "oh, I like what you do," we have this code: if I don't actually know the person-- cause I try to teach her the difference between the people who just, like, know us, and the people who actually know, that we actually know, cause she's six and I want her to know who strangers are-- so we have this code, so if it's someone we don't actually know, I turn into a baby polar bear and our baby polar bear voice is "mraaaaah."

Kimya: And so, so I almost automatically when someone says something it's just like "mraaaaah."

Kimya: I think that's just like an excuse because usually I'm just so freaked out I don't know what to say, so it's like "mraaaaah." And I'm like "yeah, I just do that because like I want her to know it's a stranger" but really I'm just scared.

Kimya: I love you guys, you are the best people. I'm so honored to be here.

[Same Shit / Complicated lyrics]

You were looking down at them, they were looking down at you.You were starched and press, they were all disheveled.They were holding hands, they were ragamuffins andThey said "I know we're not fancy, but we're on the same level.We've got plans, big plans we're gonna change the world.All you care about is dollars, that doesn't make sense.All you do is hit snooze, watch the news, buy shoes, drink booze, money feel spent andDay after day after day, it's the same shit.Day after day after day, it's the same shit.Day after day after day, it's the same shit.Day after day after day after day after day."

Then you looked at them without batting an eye and say"Hey little hippie, let your freak flag fly.Why don't you go smoke a bowl in your best tie dye,Get a tattoo of a dancing bear holding a peace sign.You can talk the talk but when it comes to real change,Aren't you and all your little friends exactly the same?You sit around at potlucks pointing fingers, placing blame,Drinking kombucha, and eating tempeh, andDay after day after day, it's the same shit.Day after day after day, it's the same shit.Day after day after day, it's the same shit.Day after day after day after day after day."

If you are judging them while they are judging you,When you think that makes them assholes, maybe you're an asshole too.Do we argue with each other 'til we both turn blue,Or find similarities in what we like and what we do?

Yeah, just because someone does not look like meDoesn't mean that they are a clone or a sheep.Maybe they like their job and they're living their dream,And they love their friends and their family.

Yeah some people thrive between nine and five,And feel like they're choking if their neck's not tied.And some people feel as if they're gonna dieIf their seams aren't straight and their shoes aren't tied.

Some people like business, some people like numbers,Some people grow organic heirloom cucumbers,And only feel free with their hands in the dirtIn a pair of old jeans and their favorite t-shirt

Some people feel enslaved if they have a boss,Some people without one feel totally lost.To make this world work it takes all different kinds.We have all different tastes, different strengths, different minds

So it doesn't make sense to generalizeAnd it doesn't make sense to judge with our eyes.We need more compassion, we need to be kindIf you open your heart you might like what you find.

'Cause there are some mean bus drivers, and there are some mean bus driversAnd there are some nice cops in Madison, Wisconsin.And there are some nice teachers, and there are some mean teachersJust because you have a mean teacher doesn't mean all teachers suck.

And no one is nice all the timeNo one is mean all the timeThink about what someone's going throughThat's making them be mean to you

Maybe their pet gerbil died and they are really sad inside,Or maybe they got in a fight with someone that they really like,Maybe they are really shy and don't know to socializeThey may just want to run and hide, not saying that it's justifiedBut if we learn to empathize the resentments will vaporizeSituations metamorphosize before out very eyes.

Then the need to stereotype will become outdatedWhen we realize that everyone is really complicated

We are all so complicatedWe are all so complicatedI am also complicatedI am also complicated

I'm a black mama lactivist, a home-owning punk.It's been over a decade since the last time I got drunk.I drive a minivan, I've got junk in the trunk.I think Danny DeVito is a total hunk.

I like revisiting the shit my therapist helps me remember.Being friends with someone for a long time, still not knowing their gender.I fight for equal rights and I fight for inner peace.I pray to the dead for the gratitude I need.

I've got chickens in my backyard and a little garden plot,I really hate commercials but I got a slap-chop.I'm a sucker for a remix, let me tell you what,By the time that I am finished, you're gonna love these nuts.

My baby's daddy's a musician from the mountains in France,He wrote me a song, did an interpretive dance,Then he knocked me up, now we have the coolest kid,Yeah, making her with him's the smartest thing I ever did.

And I feel like I can fly when I'm on roller skates,I get a little high when I eat dried datesI feel like I'm unloading when I'm loading up the carI feel like I'm exploding when I'm holding my guitar

I don't understand what numbers have to do with successOr what sales have to do with happiness,Unless they're the kind of sails that will carry me to sea,Where my grandma and grandpa are waiting for me.

I never thought I'd make it to 25, well now I'm 40 and I'm glad that I'm alive.If I ever need a tour bus I'm still gonna drive,Cause I looking out the windshield as the world goes by,Looking out the windshield as the world goes by.Yeah looking out the windshield as the world goes by

Now I'm 40 and I'm glad that I'm aliveI like looking out the windshield as the world goes by.

John: Everybody. Okay, so now we're going to do a bit of reader's theater. We're gonna read a scene from my novel Paper Towns. Paper Towns is a book about imagining other people complexly, it's also about imagining our stories and myths more complexly.

John: So, I'm not going to read it by myself, though. I'm going to play the role of Q. But then playing the role of Angela, we have the lovely Hannah Hart.

Hannah: Thanks bro

John: Playing Ben, my best friend, we have none other than Grace Helbig, from Daily Grace.

Grace: Heeey. I'm a real boy.

John: And, and playing Radar, we have Neil Gaiman. So Q and Ben are sitting together at the cafeteria when, when Angela, who is Radar's girlfriend, approaches. You can use that fourth mic, I think, if you want. Alright. Yes, Angela walks up to Q and Ben at the cafeteria.

Grace: "She's probably not that good with computers, though. We need someone who's good at computers. Plus I bet she sucks at video games. By the way, nice call saying that Radar's folks are overprotective."

John: "Well, it's not my place to tell her."

Grace: "I wonder how long till she gets to see the Team Radar Residence and Museum."

Neil (as Radar): "I decided during government that I would actually, literally suck donkey balls if it meant I--"

John: (Breaking character) I think we should just stop and acknowledge it happened. That Neil Gaiman said "I would actually, literally suck donkey balls." I'm not gonna lie to you, this entire thing was a setup. For that moment. And it happened.

Grace: My brain is painting a picture, and my brain is a beautiful artist.

Neil (as Radar): "I decided during government that I would actually, literally suck donkey balls if it meant I could skip that class for the rest of the semester."

John: "You can learn a lot about government from donkey balls. Hey, we just saw Angela."

Grace: "Yeah, she wants to know why she's never been over to your house."

Neil: "Oh crap."

John: "Are you embarrassed about something?"

Neil: "Shut up."

John: "You live in a lovely home."

Grace: "Seriously, bro. She's a really nice girl. I don't see why you can't introduce her to your parents and show her Casa Radar."

Neil: "IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS."

John: I'd heard Radar say "the world's largest collection of black San­tas" perhaps a thousand times in my life, and it never became any less funny to me. But he wasn't kidding. I remembered the first time I visited. I was maybe thirteen. It was spring, many months past Christmas, and yet black Santas lined the windowsills. Paper cutouts of black Santas hung from the stairway banister. Black Santa candles adorned the dining room table. A black Santa oil painting hung above the mantel, which was itself lined with black Santa figurines. In total, Radar's parents owned more than twelve hundred black Santas of various sorts. And as a plaque beside their front door proclaimed, Radar's house was an officially registered Santa Landmark according to the Society for Christmas.

John: "You just gotta tell her, man. You just gotta say, ‘Angela, I really like you, but there's something you need to know: when we go to my house to hook up, we'll be watched by the twenty-four hundred eyes of twelve hundred black Santas."

Neil: "Yeah, I don't think I'll put it exactly like that, but I'll deal with it."

John: "You know, when you see them all together, it really does make you question the way you imagine your myths."

John: So I'm sad to say we've nearly reached the end of our Carnegie Hall show. I hope that it has been an evening of awesome. Hank Green's gonna come out now and play one more song for us.

Hank: This song is about a fish.

[crowd cheers]

Hank: It's a really weird thing to scream about, you guys. So in the deep sea, just picture the deep sea, the light doesn't get that deep. It doesn't get anywhere near that deep. It's perfectly dark. There's no life that can live without light, right? Well but they can, because that's called marine snow -- it's really terrible what it actually is; it sounds lovely. "Marine snow, it's like snow under the water." Except that it's made up of the dead bodies of organisms. Just rotting detritus.

Hank: And that's what feeds the deep sea ecosystem, and there isn't a' lot of it because not very much of it falls down because the, like, life is very efficient at using you know, energy and so whatever is left over gets to the deep sea. There isn't very much of it, so it's difficult to sustain a lot of organisms down there. So if you're a fish and you live in the deep sea, and you need another fish of a different gender to make a baby fish with, it's hard to find one.

Hank: And that's tough, you know. I mean, we all know what that's like, right? And so a lot of organisms have adapted amazing strategies for dealing with this problem. But probably the coolest and most interesting is that of the deep sea anglerfish. And what happens is, when a male anglerfish is born, it is just a tale and a mouth and like a nose -- it's got a nose -- and balls. And it doesn't even have a digestive system. Like, it is incapable of surviving on its own.

Hank: And its only job is to smell out a female anglerfish, and if it finds one, it bites her, and then an enzyme -- yeah, ooh, kinky -- and then an enzyme -- it gets kinkier -- an enzyme in her skin dissolves his flesh, like of his lips, and then their circulatory systems fuse together, and then they like all of the rest, whatever is left of his body senesces into her body, and then he just sort of becomes like a pair of nuts hanging off of her side.

Hank: And then whenever she needs him, she just sends a chemical, like a hormone, through her body and it, those nuts produce their nut stuff. And that is how anglerfish reproduce. I thought that that story was so beautiful that I wrote a song about it.

[A Song About An anglerfish lyrics]Yes it's true that I once went through lifeAs the guy who always had to rhyme life with strifeYes I've been burned and I've been spurnedAnd through it all, yes I have learnedThat love is not about whether you get stabbedBut how slow the knife gets turned

But my friends, I've found an-- ohBut my friends, I've found animal who doesn't feel this painAnd my life is so much better now that I can feel the same

Because you can't hate the nightIf you've lived your whole life without lightAnd you can't hate the dishIf you've only ever eaten fishAnd you can't feel alone if it's all you've ever known

Yeah the deep sea anglerfish has no reason to be happyBut it has no frickin' idea what else to be

The deep sea dwelling anglerfish never has to find a mateThey are always there together when it's time to procreateSee, one dark night a young male bites the female on her sideAnd then slowly he becomes a sperm producing parasite

And if we can say he lives at all, he lives until she diesAnd until that day, he literally never leaves her side

Oh you can't hate the nightIf you've lived your whole life without lightAnd you can't hate the dishIf you've only ever eaten fishAnd you can't feel alone if it's all you've ever known

Yeah, the deep sea anglerfish has no reason to be happyBut it has no frickin' idea what else to be

Hank: I'm inviting my friend John back out onto the stage with me.

John: We just want to say thank you so much for being part of an evening of awesome with us, and for making it awesome. I hope it was awesome for you. We want to thank Carnegie Hall and everybody -- hopefully not by bringing down the balconies. And uh, we also want to thank everybody at Penguin, our friends and family who are here, and all of you. As we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.

For years this rule has kept me out of hopeless despairYou simply do not feel what is always thereI ask my brain to entertain that pain is the sameThat if I feel it all the time, can you really call it pain?

I don't have any friends, and I don't have any hairBut neither does the anglerfish, and she doesn't care

Because you can't hate the nightIf you've lived your whole life without lightAnd you can't hate the dishIf you've only ever eaten fishAnd you can't feel alone if it's all you've ever known

Yeah, the deep sea anglerfish has no reason to be happyBut she has no frickin' idea what else to be

John: I mean, other than our parents, who we liked. But the first thing that we liked together as kids was a band called They Might Be Giants. And they covered a song we really loved about this great city, so we thought we'd sing that for you now.

Hank:You called me last night, on the telephone,and I was glad to hear from you 'cause I was all alone.You said, "It's snowing, it's snowing! God I hate this weather!"Now I walk through blizzards just to get us back together.

We met in the springtime at a rock and roll show.It was on the Bowery when it was time to go.We kissed on the subway in the middle of the night.I held your hand, you held mine, it was the best night of my life.

John & Hank:'Cause everyone's your friend, in New York City.And everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty.The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see.But the best thing about New York City is... you and me.

Hank:You wrote me a letter, just the other day.Said, "Springtime is coming soon so why don't you come to stay?"I Packed my stuff, was on the bus, I can't believe it's true.I'm three days from New York City and I'm three days from you.

Hank: Sing it if you know it!

Hank & John:'Cause everyone's your friend, in New York City.And everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty.The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see.But the best thing about New York City is... you and me.

'Cause everyone's your friend, in New York City.And everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty.The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see.But the best thing about New York City is... you and me.

John: Thanks very much.

Hank: Thank you all, like seriously. Thank you all so much, for everything.

John: Yeah, this is one of the coolest things that's ever happened to us, maybe, maybe top two. I had a kid, so. Um, we'd like to, we'd like to end tonight by bringing out some of the people who you saw... The Mountain Goats, John Darnielle and Jon Wurster. Kimya Dawson. Grace Helbig and Hannah Hart. Neil Gaiman. Is that everybody? Oh! I know. Ashley, Daniel. From The Lizzie Bennet Diaries! Look how nice they look.

John D:I broke free on a Saturday morningI put the pedal to the floorHeaded north on Mills AvenueAnd listened to the engine roar

My broken house behind meAll good things aheadA girl named CathyWants a little of my timeSix cylinders underneath the hoodCrashing and kickingAha, Listen to the engine whine

I am going to make it through this yearIf it kills meI am going to make it though this yearIf it kills me

John: Alright, we'd also like to welcome to the stage my mom and dad. My publisher, Julie Strauss-Gabel. My agent, Jodi Reamer. The amazing Elyse Marshall who made this whole evening possible. My dear aforementioned friend from high school, Sean Titone. And other people who I have forgotten who will walk out now! And I will say hi!

John: I've done it, okay, that's it! I did it! Oh no I didn't! Hank's wife, Katherine! My own wife, who I managed to forget! And valerie2776, who invented the Pizza John shirt. Thanks to all of you. Thank you to The Mountain Goats. Thank you to all of you, you guys are made of awesome.

John D:I played video games in a drunken hazeI was seventeen years youngHurt my knuckles punching the machinesThe taste of scotch rich on my tongue

And then Cathy showed upAnd we hung outTrading swigs from a bottleAll bitter and cleanLocking eyesHolding handsTwin high maintenance machines

I am going to make it through this yearIf it kills meI am going to make it though this yearIf it kills me

I drove home in the California duskI could feel the alcohol inside of me humPictured the look on my stepfather's faceReady ready ready ready for the bad things to come

I downshifted as I turned into the drivewayThe motor screaming outIt was stuck in second gearThe scene ends badlyAs you might imagineIn a cavalcade of anger and fear

John D:You sing!There will be feasting and dancingIn Jerusalem next year

John D & John:I am going to make it through this yearIf it kills meI am going to make it though this year, yeah,If it kills me